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What Can You Learn When Nothing Is On The Beach


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Late this afternoon and into the evening (about 4 hours on the beach) I searched some of my normal spots.  It was awful.  I found next to nothing.  Why?

These are beaches and sub-beaches where I have found dozens of rings and thousands of coins.  Sometimes the signals are so dense you just have to stop and come back the next day.  Why the difference?

Energy I would say.

Tonight the few targets I found were very light (3-4 pull tabs, aluminum, partial pieces) and very few coins (less than 10).  There were no rings, earrings or partial pieces of heavy metals.  There was nothing down in the very low tide area and nothing at the high tide mark (such that it is) and no cut.  The waves are less than 1 foot and the intervals are 13-15 seconds.  Nothing is moving, collecting and washing up!

The energy of the waves has created great pockets for me in the past.  A couple of years ago during the El Niño  you could go out on the beach at almost any time, any where and find targets that were worth keeping.  There was a lot of energy in the water and in the waves.  You had many days when waves deposited objects onto the wet sand beaches.  The sand didn't build up.  There were cuts.

I'm using the same 3030, the same 17" coil and the same settings.  I read the wave and tide reports.  I knew this would be tough.

Tonight made nugget hunting look easy!

There is a reason why objects are and aren't there on the beach.  Keep track of your energy.

Mitchel

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Spot on, Mitchel..

It's right at two months since Irma hit and I've yet to be able to decently work the low tide dropoff shelves that form during periods of higher-surf seas with steeper-sloped no-cut beaches.. I seriously doubt anyone has been able to do so.. It's simply been too rough a go in the zone to stay at it very long if at all.. With the beaches proper being virtually barren and the tides continuing to run abnormally high, the hunt remains a waiting game for the moment..

I can only hope whatever got pulled into the water and whatever got churned beachward from the deep during Irma has remained trapped in the low-tide meeting points this entire time rather than working themselves outward and downward, which under normal conditions following a storm is usually the case..

Swamp

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24 minutes ago, Swampstomper Al said:

Spot on, Mitchel..

It's right at two months since Irma hit and I've yet to be able to decently work the low tide dropoff shelves that form during periods of higher-surf seas with steeper-sloped no-cut beaches.. I seriously doubt anyone has been able to do so.. It's simply been too rough a go in the zone to stay at it very long if at all.. With the beaches proper being virtually barren and the tides continuing to run abnormally high, the hunt remains a waiting game for the moment..

I can only hope whatever got pulled into the water and whatever got churned beachward from the deep during Irma has remained trapped in the low-tide meeting points this entire time rather than working themselves outward and downward, which under normal conditions following a storm is usually the case..

Swamp

I've been in "the trenches" few times since the hurricane.  I didn't find much except lead fishing weights.  The upper beaches were stripped bare of targets during the fall storms,  nothing but seaweed and pieces of canslaw.  The hunting is dismal here in Melbourne and even I'm starting to get discouraged.  No gold or silver for 3 weeks (unless you count yard sales) and even the clad is scarce.  :dry:

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To me a beach is a huge panning device, with heavies concentrating in some places and light material elsewhere. The best times to detect are often after storms and so only locals on the spot are poised to get the goods in the best of times. Visitors have to just deal with whatever conditions exist on arrival, and odds unfortunately are they will not be favorable.

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4 hours ago, MontAmmie said:

I've been in "the trenches" few times since the hurricane.  I didn't find much except lead fishing weights.  The upper beaches were stripped bare of targets during the fall storms,  nothing but seaweed and pieces of canslaw.  The hunting is dismal here in Melbourne and even I'm starting to get discouraged.  No gold or silver for 3 weeks (unless you count yard sales) and even the clad is scarce.  :dry:

I just took a look at the Cocoa Beach Pier surf cam and it's rougher today than it was Wednesday, which was the last time I was out.. No go the remainder of today anyhow, as next low tide is dark @ approx 7:20P.. 7:36A Sat & 8:30A Sun low tides @ + 0.5' look to be windy with NE wind chop too.. Pretty wet & bumpy for the line I'd want to be walkin'.. Crap shoot at best I'd say..

Fairly dismal otherwise here too.. Tons of old seaweed.. At least most of the canslaw is way far back.. Towel line is zig-zaggy walkable, but that alone is usually not enough to get me there these days unless I'm jonesin' really bad..

Hang tough on the discouraged -- should flip back around soon..
 

1 hour ago, Steve Herschbach said:

To me a beach is a huge panning device, with heavies concentrating in some places and light material elsewhere. The best times to detect are often after storms and so only locals on the spot are poised to get the goods in the best of times. Visitors have to just deal with whatever conditions exist on arrival, and odds unfortunately are they will not be favorable.

Copy that..!

Missed close to two weeks right off the bat due to four+ days no power followed by a week's worth of clean-up.. By the time I first made it beachside, surf was running high and heavy, the beach was all-slope w/no cut and it's been this way or to a lesser extent since..

There's still at least a chance for decent prospects since the beach areas were heavily evacuated and if ya didn't ride it out it was a few days before folks were allowed back onto the barrier islands.. The information I'm missing is what the surf was like the second week..? If things were at all rough, when coupled with the consistantly higher tides I think there's a fairly good chance not much got scooped out of the drop zone..

And actually, I think Ammie would know.. I'm pretty sure they were back beachside by the 2nd week..

Swamp

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  • 2 weeks later...

Steve's observations about the beach follow true.

I grew up in Florida before anyone had a metal detector on the beach.  There were still stories about finding jewelry on Jacksonville Beach around the pilings of the piers and such.  Locals knew this and would look.  Beach combers would look for the shipwreck treasures on other parts of the beaches for hundreds of years all over the world.

When I lived in Hawaii I had a few beaches for surfing and a few shell beaches.  I knew the tides and the waves and Steve's observations held true.  Again here in California I live on Santa Monica Bay and the wind, waves and tide make for a big pan.  When conditions are just right there is a big pocket of energy where all the heavies collect and it could take you several days to properly detect the area.

Now is not one of those times.  Our forecast for waves this week says that 2.5 feet will be the biggest wave.  The guys who find the most have to go out and get it.  They wade and find the heavies where they are before they make it to a tide beach but I'm not geared for that.

I'll have to wait for the next South Pacific swell or storm from Alaska.

Mitchel

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1 hour ago, mn90403 said:

...Our forecast for waves this week says that 2.5 feet will be the biggest wave... Mitchel

Just the opposite here since Irma; that's been about the smallest breakers.. Can't walk the near-shore low tide flats without getting pummeled.. Not fun..

Flat surf has to be making you krazee, Mitchel.. Seems like it was just last week you n Rob n others couldn't step on a beach without scoring $30 in rainbow quarters & two gold rings simply for showing up.. Wouldn't mind one bit being on the left coast during / following next El Nino..

Swamp

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I went out a couple of nights ago and I got lucky.  I found a $1 coin.  That brought my grand total to around $3 for the 3 miles that I walked on Prime Santa Monica beaches.

Go find a Spanish coin Swamp.

Mitchel

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Mitchel ,

Have you hunted the beaches north of Santa Monica Pier? I used to hunt Zuma and Westward Beach in Malibu and did okay. Another hot spot I liked is Leo Carrillo beach...a few scuba shops take their beginner scuba students for a beach dive at Leo Carrillo. That's where I learned also years ago and I remembered that a few students lost some nice gear on their entry and exits thru the surf. They would lose weight belts, cameras and such.   Of course its not jewelry but their is a potential for that too. 

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A friend of mine 'worked' Zuma a few days ago and he found 11 cents!  That was one dime and one penny in about 1.5 hours.  A couple of summers ago he would have had a ring or two and over $5 in the same amount of time.

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